Posts Tagged sex education

Recently, the Obama administration quietly updated its list of “evidence-based programs” that “met the effectiveness criteria” for preventing teenage pregnancy and are therefore endorsed by the Department of Health and Human Services. This list includes the Heritage Keepers Abstinence Education program. Which is weird because, like basically all abstinence-only programs ever, it doesn’t work.

According to RH Reality Check, a 2007 study found that the program “had little or no impact on sexual abstinence or activity.” But that makes it sound like Heritage is just ineffective but harmless. In fact, while it “contains little or no information about puberty, anatomy, sexually transmitted diseases, or sexual behavior,” it does teach kids some stuff. Here’s a sample:

“Males and females are aroused ...

Recently, the Obama administration quietly updated its list of “evidence-based programs” that “met the effectiveness criteria” for preventing teenage pregnancy and are therefore endorsed by the Department of Health and Human Services. This list includes the ...

This week,youth advocates from around the world are in New York for the Commission in Population and Development, the United Nations’ annual meeting on development, health and rights. This year’s meeting is focused on adolescents and youth, and these young advocates are in town to ensure that governments uphold prior commitments to advancing the sexual and reproductive rights and health of all. We sat down with Thomas Alberts, a college student from Utah and StefanieSuclupe, a young nurse from Peru, to find out what’s at stake—at the UN and beyond—when it comes to young people and sex.

Stefanie: In Peru, young people face many barriers to accessing health services, and violations of their sexual and reproductive ...

This week,youth advocates from around the world are in New York for the Commission in Population and Development, the United Nations’ annual meeting on development, health and rights. This year’s meeting is focused on ...

Tennessee senators approved an update to the state’s abstinence-based sex education law that includes warnings against “gateway sexual activity.”

In a new family life instructions bill, holding hands and kissing could be considered gateways to sex.

The bill gives parents “a cause of action” so they can sue any teacher that breaks the rules by “demonstrating gateway sexual activity” and also bans the distribution of materials “that condone, encourage or promote student sexual activity among unmarried students” (why do I have ...

Welcome back to The Academic Feminist, the series that bridges the blogging/academic divide by linking discussions in feminist academia to those taking place online. Today’s interviewee is Mimi Arbeit, a doctoral student in Child Development at Tufts University. You can learn more about Arbeit’s work on her blog. All comments and suggestions for The Academic Feminist can sent to the editor here or on Twitter @gwendolynb.

Can you talk a little about your main research interests, and what led you to choose this area?

I study adolescent sexuality using a positive approach, which means I believe sex and sexuality are important, meaningful, and potentially positive elements of adolescent development. I’m interested ...

Welcome back to The Academic Feminist, the series that bridges the blogging/academic divide by linking discussions in feminist academia to those taking place online. Today’s interviewee is Mimi Arbeit, a doctoral student in Child Development at ...

It’s truly hard to digest how hilarious this video is from the American Life League on Planned Parenthood and their “agenda” to lure your children into sex addiction with candy penis pops and vagina fruit roll-ups so they can sell them abortions and birth control. The gateway drug? Masturbation.

It’s truly hard to digest how hilarious this video is from the American Life League on Planned Parenthood and their “agenda” to lure your children into sex addiction with candy penis pops and vagina fruit roll-ups so ...

Anti-choice activists, I hope you’re sitting down. It turns out that, contrary to your wishful thinking, having an abortion does not increase the chances a woman* will suffer mental health issues.

Of course, some of you anti-choicers won’t be convinced by this evidence because it was done by scientists, which you’ll find sketchy. But just so you know, a study, commissioned by the National Collaborating Centre for Mental Health, part of the Royal College of Psychiatrists in the UK and funded by the England’s Department of Health, reviewed 44 studies from 1990-2011 on the relationship between abortion and mental health and concluded,

“The best current evidence suggests that it makes no difference to a woman’s mental health whether she chooses to ...

Anti-choice activists, I hope you’re sitting down. It turns out that, contrary to your wishful thinking, having an abortion does not increase the chances a woman* will suffer mental health issues.

At a time when the conservative push for abstinence-only-until-marriage has left most public schools teaching abstinence-only or abstinence-plus programs, Mr. Vernacchio’s course is a rarity in that it acknowledges that sexuality can be a “force for good.” In a country where even some “comprehensive” sex education is based on the fear-based premise that teens shouldn’t be having sex, but since they might be doing it anyway, they should probably know how to protect themselves, so they don’t ...

This is great. Today Zoya Amirin, the only woman certified as a sex therapist in Indonesia, is launching a weekly podcast, called “In Bed with Zoya,” to debunk common myths about sex and contraception.

“People here really believe in myths … that’s my biggest challenge,” said Amirin, adding she wants to make her show as cool as possible so people will tune in without feeling they’re being talked down to.

“It’s time to embrace our sexuality in a healthy way,” she said, “and to be mature in our understanding.”